Pork tenderloin in hot sesame sauce

Sometimes a craving gets hold of me and just won’t let go. A major character flaw. Major.

So this time it’s Chinese food, or Thai, or something along those lines. It’s got such a hold on me that I’ve already gone through two bottles of hot sesame sauce this week. You might think I haven’t cooked much this week, and you’d nearly be right. I hadn’t cooked anything new until today. Though is today’s dish really all that different?

Probably not. It isn’t kung pao chicken, granted, but it’s a fairly close relative. The difference is that there’s absolutely nothing “sweet” about this one. In kung pao, the sugar and cashews give the dish a slightly sweet flavour. That’s not the case with this pork in sesame sauce.

This dish is hot. Really. The kind of heat that warms you through rather than burning your mouth. So if you don’t like it too hot, go easy on the seasoning. I gave mine a damn good peppering. I’d still recommend it.

At a glance: 

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Serves: two

Calories: do you ask how many calories there are when you go out for Chinese?

Ingredients for a tasty Chinese-style pork fillet:

• one large pork tenderloin
• 20 cm of leek (the white part)
• half a bottle of hot Thai sesame sauce
• 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce
• 1 hot fresh green chilli
• 1 hot fresh red chilli
• 5 shallots
• 3 cloves of garlic
• half an onion
• freshly ground black pepper
• Sichuan pepper
• a piece of fresh ginger
• salt
• olive oil

Method (stir-fry):

I started, just as I do for kung pao chicken, by getting all the ingredients ready. When you’re frying things this quickly – stir-frying, in other words – that really matters.

I cut the frozen pork tenderloin into wide but thin slices. I put them in a little bowl and seasoned them lightly with salt and generously with coarsely ground black pepper. I also added ground Sichuan pepper (about a tablespoon). I chopped the ginger (a piece about a centimetre long) very finely and added that to the meat too. I mixed it all together and set it aside.

I cut the onion, shallots and garlic into fairly chunky dice. I cut the chillies and leek into 2–3 cm pieces.

Once everything was ready, I heated olive oil in a frying pan over a high “flame” (as high as 9 on my scale of 1 to 10). I threw in the pork and stirred. I fried it for a few minutes, stirring the whole time. I poured in 2 tablespoons of light soy sauce and kept stirring.

Next I tossed in the onion, shallots and garlic and stirred again. I added another tablespoon of light soy sauce. In went the remaining vegetables, and I kept stirring until the sauce evaporated. Then I added half a bottle of hot sesame sauce, turned down the “heat” (from 9 to 6) and fried everything for about another 2 minutes, still stirring. I served it with jasmine rice (in a separate little bowl). Enjoy!